


The More Things Change

by lowbatterie (problematick)



Category: Nurse Jackie (TV)
Genre: (which I always do), Gen, it's eleanor/jackie if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 22:33:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8031526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/problematick/pseuds/lowbatterie
Summary: Once upon a time, Jackie wasn't there for Eleanor. Trying to explain herself goes about as well as you'd expect. 
(A short musing on how Eleanor might have reacted if Jackie had just confessed to her addiction after the season one finale. Written in February 2010, originally posted to Livejournal.)





	The More Things Change

When Jackie finally told Eleanor about the drugs, she was met with red puffy eyes, hatefully thin lips, crossed arms and an aura of betrayed rage that would have frightened her if not for the Percocet running through her system.

But Eleanor had to admit… it explained a bloody hell of a lot.

That didn’t mean she was ready to forgive her yet at all.

Of course, everything that was so carefully constructed and balanced in Jackie’s world was falling apart. Eddie went back to the bar a few more times while Jackie nearly OD’d on Vicodin, and finally confronted her husband about the whole thing.

Kevin was surprisingly calm about it. Which, for Jackie, was unbearable. Because anger she could handle. It was heartbreak she wasn’t good with. (At least not her own.) When he quietly told her he was moving his things to the tiny room above the bar, she refused to cry. The girls did plenty of it, and if Grace had one more panic attack-meltdown, Jackie thought she might die from worry.

So, when exactly one month later, Eleanor began requesting that Jackie be her nurse again, that little olive branch of familiarity was the tiny ray of hope that things might not have disintegrated completely in Jackie Peyton’s life. Not quite.

Zoey didn’t get fired, either. Somehow. Miraculously. No one knows how, especially with the mood Akalitus had been in recently. Actually, how Jackie herself wasn’t fired also was a bit of a mystery, but Jackie wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If she could consider having to work here after all that… all this was any kind of gift. But, really, she did. Because she was still working. Jackie could do that. She could come in and deal with the regulars, and the addicts, and the crazies, and the tears, and the outraged, (and Coop, in all his tit-grabbing, sloppy-kissing glory,) and she could do her job.

Two months to the day found Jackie buying a Snickers bar and a pack of cigarettes— _hell yeah_ she was smoking again—at the convenience center with O’Hara strolling down the hallway, tugging on a pair of leather gloves, a peacoat half shrugged on. Jackie watched her from the corner of her eye (because staring was rude), collecting the last of her change from the counter when she realized the doctor had stopped to arrange herself, purse and scarf tossed to the bench to her left. She moved slowly, dropping her eyes back to her wallet when Eleanor’s eyes flicked over. The brunette fixed her collar and pulled the scarf on, draping it for appropriate levels of warmth and fashion, then picked up her purse and faced Jackie with a fist on her hip.

“Well, are you coming to lunch or not?”

Jackie’s face was usually almost comically readable, especially to Eleanor. Those blue eyes were wide with shock and her lips were pursed in that way that they got when Jacks didn’t know what to say. (Eleanor frowned at herself internally for letting the pet-name slip even in her thoughts. Because she was still mad. And upset. She just needed an escort to lunch. That was all.) If O’Hara hadn’t been so concentrated on not trembling to hear her answer, she probably would have laughed. Also, she was ravenous, so if Jackie was simply going to stand there—

“No sushi.”

Eleanor’s mouth dropped open to protest and Jackie only shook her head. Her mouth clamped shut into a pout, her nose lifted a little higher into the air. “Fine. Just for that, I’m getting crème brulée.”

As the two women fell in step, neither commented on the tiny quirks of smiles that had been missing from their respective faces for the last eight weeks. Nor did they mention the shiny brightness of Jackie’s eyes. They got out onto the street and Jackie would curse the cold air as she wiped at her cheeks, claiming the wind was making her eyes water.

Eleanor wouldn’t say otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the summary, this was written many moons ago before season two premiered. I had no idea how they were going to address--or not, cool job Jackie--the issues present in the finale, but I still like the tone of this one. If you were one of the six people that saw it on livejournal, it was from this pseud's pseud at substitute-ego. Porting a few things from there if they stand the test of time, like this one.


End file.
